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They met in a cosy Muggle teashop, overlooking a verdant park, because anyone who was anyone knew that as far as locations for covert assignations went these days, dark alleys and seedy bars were out and bijou cafes of the kind often frequented by elderly ladies were in.
Plus, cake.
“So,” said the first witch, a forkful of Victoria sponge halfway to her mouth. “You think you can do it?”
The second, who looked perfectly at home in their surroundings, replied, “I can’t see why not. I may need access to …”
“Gringotts, yes - I can do that. Just don’t tell them who it’s for, they’re still holding a grudge. Apparently they took the whole breaking-in-and-causing-structural-damage thing personally.”
The second witch sipped her tea and diplomatically chose not to say anything.
“I’ll help with anything I can,” her companion said, “especially since I can get into the newspaper archives - you can come and look yourself, just send me an owl.”
“I’ll definitely do that, thanks. I do love a good archive.”
“It’s great down there, though I’m surprised they didn’t revoke my access after the Skeeter incident, to be honest.”
“What did you do - lock her in there?”
“Ha! I wish. No, I fished out a load of articles from when she was writing about how mad and unstable he was. Repapered the walls around her cubicle. Didn’t go down too well, as he can do no wrong in most people’s eyes these days. I saw at least three people spit in her coffee.”
“No more than she deserves.”
“A lot less than she deserves … anyway, what do you say? Are we on?”
“Oh yes, we are most definitely on,” said the second witch. “More tea?”
---
The third letter that week was delivered by the same barn owl that had brought the others, and Harry was suspicious.
“Stop being suspicious,” said his wife without looking up, eyes moving rapidly over the lines of neat handwriting. Harry quickly averted his gaze, but it didn’t lessen his curiosity.
“Something interesting?” he asked, tone casual.
“I suppose so,” said Ginny. She carefully folded the letter up and tucked it into her robes before finally looking at Harry. “It’s just my lover, José. He’ll be back in the country next week and wants to meet up.”
He didn’t know what he’d expected.
“Oh, right.” He poured himself another coffee, yawning. “José … from Spain, is he?”
“No, Essex. Shall I tell him yes? There’s nothing on the calendar for next week, is there?”
Hermione got them a calendar every year, one of those family ones with columns for everyone’s plans. Ginny had amused herself initially by filling in events like ‘meeting with Minister’ and ‘shareholders’ conference’ in the children’s spaces, but she’d got bored after a while and neither of them ever bothered to put down things they were actually doing. This month had only one entry, on the 16th: ‘POO’.
“Go ahead,” Harry said. “I’m meeting my other wife on Tuesday, though, so you’ll have the kids.”
“Maud? Do give her my love.”
Ginny got to her feet, tossing her hair back with undeniable smugness. Harry narrowed his eyes at her.
"You've got a secret," he said accusingly.
"Yep." Busying herself with the kettle, she threw an 'and what are you going to do about it?' look at him.
"Do I need to be worried? Not like that ," he added, when Ginny looked scornfully at him. "I mean, you've not taken up duelling Dark wizards for a hobby, have you?"
"Yes, Harry. Along with cross stitch and Quidditch, I nip off to Azkaban once a week for a spot of curse-dodging with Death Eaters - it really helps me relax."
"I feel like you might be being sarcastic," said Harry. Ginny snorted and lobbed a damp dishcloth at his head.
"I have a secret. It's nothing bad. Is that all right with you, nosy?"
"Yes," Harry said forcefully, although he couldn't resist adding, "it definitely doesn't involve any swarthy Spaniards, right?"
"Jealousy is a lovely colour on you," Ginny remarked. "Matches your eyes."
She went back to making tea and Harry, accepting that he wasn't going to get any further, picked up the newspaper.
He put it down again a minute later.
"Why is my fake wife called Maud?"
Ginny sat down, steaming mug in hand and wearing a petulant expression.
"If you're having a second wife, she isn't going to be attractive. She's fifty-seven with a perm and warts."
"I thought I was the jealous one," Harry said, and then, "José's bald."
"Maud hasn't bathed since nineteen eighty three."
"José's got a tiny -"
***
Ginny continued to receive mysterious correspondence and occasionally disappear on unspecified errands, and Harry continued to pretend he wasn't bothered by not knowing what she was up to. Sticking his nose into things he wasn't supposed to know, it could be argued, had contributed enormously to his successful foiling of various Dark plots at Hogwarts. (It could also be argued that Ginny wasn't a Dark wizard and had every right to privacy. And that Harry had done a fair few stupid things without telling her, like going into that house without back-up and nearly ending up in the hospital again. He didn't think that counted, though, because he was fairly sure she knew anyway.)
(She did.)
He was distracted by exam season, which turned into the end of term and the start of the summer holidays, and by the time his birthday rolled around he had almost forgotten that there was a secret in the first place.
On the thirty-first he was unceremoniously woken by three small children and one small adult belly-flopping on him. It took half an hour and some deep breathing for his heart rate to return to normal, and he still felt extremely guilty about the whole incident - although as Ginny pointed out fairly, they ought to have known better than jumping on an ex-Auror, and on the bright side, none of the children seemed especially traumatised by having their father nearly hex them.
"Mum did hex Charlie once - she thought he was a burglar, he got peckish one Christmas and raided the larder in the middle of the night," she recalled matter-of-factly. "Dad had to take him to St Mungo's … you don't want to get on the wrong end of Mum's wand."
"Noted," said Harry weakly.
Downstairs he was presented with the lovingly constructed breakfast efforts of a four-, six- and eight-year old, artistically arranged on a plate in the form of a smiley face with toast glasses and a raspberry jam lightning scar, and plied with handmade cards and presents. He heaved all three children - with some difficulty - onto his chair and gave them an enormous and heartfelt hug.
"I'll give you mine later," said Ginny. Harry looked at her over the top of the children's heads; her expression gave nothing away. "Well, you'll have to go to it, actually."
Unless this was some sort of euphemism he wasn't aware of, it didn't seem like her present was the sort that had resulted in the three squirming humans currently causing him to lose feeling in his thighs. "We're going out?"
She just gave him an enigmatic smile. He wanted to say that he didn't need anything, because sitting here in the house that together they had made a home with their children was more than enough of a gift - his family was the greatest gift he'd ever received. But he knew she would have put time and effort into his present - she always did - and so he kept quiet.
At around eleven, the bell that signalled someone wanting to Floo into their house rose up in the air and rang shrilly. Ginny tapped it once with her wand, and a moment later the fireplace burst into green flames; two figures, one small, one tall, appeared, spinning and twisting as they grew larger, tumbling out onto the hearth in a shower of soot. Ron and Rose straightened up, brushing themselves off, and stepped out of the way just in time for Hermione and Hugo to step neatly out of the fireplace.
"Uncle Harry! It's your birthday!" Rose cried, launching herself at him. "You're old!"
"Yeah? Well, you're small," Harry retorted. He adored his goddaughter, but often couldn't shake the feeling that he was talking to his two best friends rolled into one argumentative six year old.
"I'm going to get bigger, though," said Rose. "You're not going to get younger."
"Brilliant," said Ron, shining with pride. "Factual and devastating. I'd say that's a nine, Rosie."
Rose looked just like her dad as she beamed. "I got a ten last week," she told her cousins proudly.
"No, we said that didn't count, because you made that little boy cry, remember?" said Hermione sternly.
"He made fun of my hair!"
"Yes, but you don't need to say something mean back. You should be the bigger person and treat people how you want to be treated."
Ron, Harry and Ginny all snorted in unison.
"That's what you'd do, is it, Hermione?" said Harry.
"I've got one word for you, love,” said Ron, “Malfoy.”
She flushed. “Happy birthday, anyway, Harry,” she said quickly, pressing a wrapped gift into his hands. “Are you going now? Don’t let us keep you.”
This was directed at Ginny, who glanced at her watch. “We’re all right. Listen, you lot -” she raised her voice to James, Al and Lily - “we’re going out, but Rose and Hugo are staying to play with you, OK?”
Harry listened to all this blankly. “Do you know?” he asked Ron in an undertone.
"Yep," said Ron.
"Are you going to tell me?"
"Nope."
Right then. Harry must have looked peeved, because Ginny slid her arm through his and squeezed his upper arm gently.
"We'll go now, before Captain Patience here loses it," she told Ron and Hermione. Harry opened his mouth to protest - he thought he was fairly easy-going, on the whole - but closed it again. He really did want to find out what was going on, and arguing would only prolong that.
(Not that he was impatient, obviously.)
"Be good!" Ginny called to the children. "Don't set fire to anything!"
She closed the door on Hermione’s yelp of protest.
“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?” Harry implored her. She glanced at him as she took his elbow, and said briefly:
“Bath.”
“But I had a shower this morning.”
Ginny shook her head, but he could see her fighting back laughter in the split second before she turned on the spot and he was whirled away into deepest darkness, her fingers gripping his arm the only solid thing in the world as they hurtled through space.
They reappeared in a narrow but well-kept alleyway in the shadow of terraced buildings on either side; it was so dark even in the middle of the day that anyone looking out of the windows facing the alley was unlikely to notice two people materialising from thin air. Ginny checked her watch again, pressed a hand to her side - Harry knew she was making sure her wand was in the pocket of her cardigan, just as he had instantly reached for his as soon as they arrived in the alleyway - and beckoned for Harry to follow her.
They seemed to be in the centre of Bath, judging by the volume of traffic and of people on the pavements; Harry had never been, although Ginny clearly had, because she led him along the street assuredly with no pause to check where she was going. She only faltered when they came to a pelican crossing, largely because Harry hurriedly threw out an arm to stop her marching into oncoming traffic and did not remove it until the green man had appeared.
On the other side of the road she frowned uncertainly for a moment - reminding Harry uncannily of Arthur - and then set off confidently along the pavement. Harry was half concentrating on dodging pedestrians, but he could not help looking around for clues - signs, perhaps - as to why Ginny had brought him to a Muggle city centre. Nothing jumped out at him. They passed a group of people that looked like tourists shuffling into a building with ‘The Jane Austen Centre’ emblazoned on a sign on its front - the name rang a faint bell, but Ginny steered him past without looking twice.
She stopped outside a building at the end of its row.
It looked just like its neighbours - a tall, stone Georgian house, with iron railings and narrow sash windows. Harry blinked, and looked closer: there was now a small bronze plaque next to the front door where there had not been one a second earlier. The inscription read SOUTH-WEST ENGLAND WIZARDING ARCHIVES.
“Er, Gin?” he said, baffled. “I think you’ve got me confused with Hermione. I’m sure this would be a great birthday treat for her, but …”
Ginny turned to him; she looked crestfallen, and for one heart-stopping moment Harry genuinely thought he had hurt her feelings.
“But - but you said you wanted to spend a day in the archives!” she said. Her eyes were wide and filled with disappointment. “You said you’d been afraid to ask all these years - you thought people would make fun of you -”
“Oh, you -" Harry's panic dissipated; he grinned at her, his heart still thumping faster than usual. "Git! I was worried!"
"Good," said Ginny triumphantly. "That'll teach you. Are you coming in, or what?"
Harry hadn't been to an archive before, either. The Ministry had a records room, which was not quite the same thing; it was also manned by a sour-faced witch who was downright unpleasant when asked for anything, meaning Harry had done his best to avoid the place and - he wasn't proud of it - deploy more junior Aurors to fetch anything he needed when possible. From what he knew, an archive was a cross between a museum and a library, i.e. the sort of place Hermione would have had her wedding if she'd been allowed.
He was not particularly overwhelmed by his first impression, which was of a small reception area with worn vinyl seating and little else. A wizard sat behind the desk, overseeing a pile of files that were busily sorting themselves into the filing cabinets behind him.
Ginny swept confidently up to him.
“Hi, Stephen - how are you? We’ve a meeting with Anna, she’s expecting us …”
Harry, who was definitely not at all jealous, scowled as Stephen (surly-looking, but in an attractive sort of way) greeted his wife warmly. He edged up to stand beside Ginny in front of the desk.
“Can you sign in, please,” Stephen said, indicating a visitor’s book. His eyes flickered over Harry as he produced a Self-Inking Quill, taking in the scar. Harry suppressed the urge to puff his chest out and instead focused on the book. He scanned the page before signing his own name: Ginny’s was there already next to Monday’s date. Under reason for visit , she’d written just three letters: ‘T.P.P.’. What was that? A person?
Feeling her gaze on him, Harry quickly put down the date, wrote ‘N/A’ under Broom registration number and scrawled his name untidily. He passed the quill to Ginny - deliberately brushing his hand against hers for longer than was strictly necessary - and watched her as she wrote the same initials she had before.
He was standing so close to her that her flowery scent tickled his nose when she straightened up and twisted slightly to look up at him with a smirk.
“You are just dying to know, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, well, if you’re in no rush,” she said, leading them away from the desk with only a nod at Stephen (Harry tried not to look too smug). “We could go for lunch first …”
“I’m not really hungry,” Harry said.
“Or - it is your birthday, after all - we could pop over to the Leaky Cauldron and get a room -”
Harry eyed her. Innocent brown eyes blinked at him. The smirk, on the other hand, was pure mischief.
“You know you’re dying to show me whatever it is just as much,” he pointed out. “Haven’t you made me wait long enough?”
“Perhaps I’m testing your stamina.”
“You’ve tested that pretty thoroughly … in many ways,” said Harry. Ginny grinned even wider at that. “C’mon … I don’t want to have to play the ‘it’s my birthday’ card, but …”
“Oh, all right.” She pretended to relent, though they both knew she had no intention of actually making him wait much longer. “Come on then, Captain Patience.”
“If you’re going to call me ‘captain’ - which for the record I’m fine with - that’s not the title I’d choose, personally,” Harry told her, as she took his hand and towed him through a set of double doors leading off the reception area. She laughed loudly.
“Captain Leaves-Wet-Towels-on-the-Bed?”
“Bit of a mouthful,” said Harry, and then firmly, “Don’t,” cutting off her filthy remark before she could draw breath.
They passed an open door through which the sound of typewriters clattering could be heard and carried on down the corridor to a draughty stairwell. There were many pictures lining the walls as they climbed the stairs: sepia-tinted photographs of places and people. They walked too quickly for Harry to take much in, but he thought he caught a glimpse of Godric’s Hollow in one picture.
They went up another flight of stairs and came to a stop outside a plain door. Ginny raised her fist to knock, but before she could, there came the sound of high heels clipping on the floorboards and a mellow voice called out to them.
“Oh, hello! I was just coming down to find you!”
The witch who had emerged smiled widely at Ginny, who beamed back. Harry had no idea who this was, but he couldn’t help but warm to her immediately: she had a friendly, kind face and looked young, around their own age. Ginny waved a hand between them.
“Anna, this is Harry - Harry, this is Professor Anna Bloomwood. She’s a magihistorian.”
Magical history, in Harry’s mind, was fairly firmly associated with Professor Binns; this witch could hardly have been further from his idea of a historian. He certainly never would have imagined one to wear a mustard-coloured dress with embroidered badgers skittering around the hem. He could see Ginny eyeing it up: she might be tougher than anyone he knew, but she was also incapable of resisting any item of clothing with an animal on it.
“Lovely to meet you,” said Professor Bloomwood, extending an elegant hand. She had a pleasing voice not at all similar to Binns’ dull drone. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“From Ginny, or Witch Weekly? ” said Harry. “Because both sources are unreliable.”
Ginny elbowed him. “D’you want your present, or not?”
“Sorry,” said Harry, grinning. “I do, yeah. Erm … what is it?”
He was struggling to imagine what might be on the other side of the door, not to mention what a magihistorian had to do with it.
“Why don’t you come in and see for yourself,” said Professor Bloomwood, drawing her wand and touching it to the door’s keyhole.
Strangely nervous - he hoped José from Essex wasn’t in there - Harry followed her inside. He saw a high ceiling, an ornate plaster rose, a polished floor - but any other detail was lost on him, because he had caught sight of a large portrait in a gilded frame hung on one of the cream walls and his heart had momentarily stopped.
He was used to seeing pictures of himself, which was what he thought he was looking at until his brain kicked into gear. It wasn't him: he had never posed for a picture with two elderly people, a witch and a wizard either side of him. No, he was looking at the teenaged James Potter, smiling confidently back at him, and beside him were …
Harry looked around. It was like a museum exhibition - displays here and there, more pictures on the walls, pages from newspapers, and captions alongside them all. He turned slowly on the spot, and the same name jumped out at him at every turn. Potter. Potter. Potter.
T.P.P., he thought, realisation dawning. The Potter Project?
He sought Ginny, and Professor Bloomwood behind her, both keenly watching his reaction. "Are those my grandparents?" he asked, gesturing to the portrait; his voice was unsteady, but he couldn't care less.
Ginny nodded.
"This is your whole family - the history of the Potters. I tried to do research myself but kept hitting walls," she explained. "You'd said that your ancestor was born in Godric's Hollow too, so I guessed that the family had stayed around there … I thought there'd be more luck in local archives. So I got in touch with Anna …”
“You did all this?” Harry asked the professor, voice slightly strangled.
She turned faintly pink under his incredulous stare. “It’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever worked on. I think I’m the envy of my colleagues, to be honest."
“What exactly - is here?” He waved vaguely at the different displays. “I mean, how much …”
“Everything I could find. And - here …”
Professor Bloomwood pointed her wand at a pair of heavy velvet drapes as tall as the room itself - they reminded Harry of the ones around Sirius’ mother’s portrait in Grimmauld Place - and said,“Ostendeo.” The drapes flew aside.
Harry had only seen one family tree before, but he knew enough to recognise another for what it was. This one was not nearly so ancient as the Black family tree (and noticeably lacking any scorch marks) but it was beautifully done - a sprawling tapestry made to look like a real tree, the outlines of a great trunk curving up to curly branches upon which names and dates were embroidered in jewel-bright thread. He moved towards it instinctively, drawing close enough to see the individual stitches, fingertips hovering milimetres from the canvas.
He found his own name first, nestled amongst the very lowest branches. Harry James Potter, b.1980. He stared at it, imagining for an unsettling moment that he could see another date concluding his life with definitive certainty … but there was none. Instead, a short thread linked his name to Ginevra Molly Weasley, and from that line grew James, Al and Lily.
His eyes moved upwards. There were his parents - and he had never known any more, not until now, when it was as simple as following the line leading from James Potter to Fleamont Potter and Euphemia Moray Lennox. And there it was, his grandparents’ names, their dates - his grandfather born in the late nineteenth century, his grandmother four years later … they had both died in nineteen seventy-nine, Harry noticed. A year before he was born.
Professor Bloomwood discreetly cleared her throat: Harry had almost forgotten there was anyone else in the room, but she was standing a short way behind him, Ginny a little closer, also staring at the tree in amazement.
“Your grandfather was a skilled potioneer,” Professor Bloomwood told him in a low voice. “His most successful invention was a hair potion - Sleekeazy’s?”
“Hermione uses that!” said Harry disbelievingly. “My - granddad invented it?”
Professor Bloomwood’s lips twitched. “There’s an article in The Potioneer’s Gazette from 1970 when he sold the company - he marketed the potion in around 1935, I believe - in which he’s quoted as commenting on the irony of his son having quite, erm -”
“Messy hair?” Harry supplied, grinning. “I bet he was thrilled - didn’t he make my dad use it?” As he spoke, he remembered his father taking great delight in ruffling his hair even further … no, he didn’t think Fleamont Potter would have had much success there. He turned back to the portrait he’d first spotted. “Is that them?”
“Yes, Fleamont and Euphemia. Lennox was her maiden name - Moray was her mother’s. It’s a tradition in Scottish families - they were from Inverness.”
Harry examined the picture, the eye of a Seeker searching for every, minute detail. He must have seen them in the Mirror of Erised, he thought, but had been so intent on soaking up his parents' faces that he hadn't paid them as much attention. Fleamont was tall like his son and grandson, the sort of man that looked powerful even if he wasn’t particularly brawny, just from the confident line of his shoulders, the slight lift of the chin, the assured stance. Euphemia had shrewd eyes and James’s long, angular nose and jaw. There was something very protective about the slender hand resting on her son’s shoulder; it wasn’t perfunctory, but undeniably motherly.
“How did they die?” Harry asked, not looking away.
“Dragon pox. Nothing that could be done - they were fairly old. They passed away within days of each other.”
“How old … no, wait, I can work it out - seventy-nine … but that means my grandmother was nearly sixty when she had my dad ...” Harry glanced uncertainly at Ginny. “Is that - I mean, isn’t that quite - I thought -”
“Rare,” said Professor Bloomwood, “but it does happen … more so for witches than Muggle women.” She wordlessly Summoned what looked like a newspaper cutting from another corner of the room and handed it to Harry; it was yellowing with age. “This is the announcement of their wedding from nineteen twenty-seven.”
Harry read it several times, harvesting every new piece of information - his grandmother had been a Healer, his grandfather had likely been from Cobblewick - before returning to the family tree.
“Can you tell me more?” he requested of Professor Bloomwood, trying not to sound too much like a child pleading for another bedtime story. Ginny slipped her hand into his.
Professor Bloomwood indicated Fleamont’s parents: Henry Edmund Potter and Clara Wenlock. “Your great-grandfather - he was on the Wizengamot during the Muggles’ First World War. He strongly believed that magical society should be allowed to help bring about peace, which was a very controversial view at that time …”
“Oh good,” said Harry fervently. It had never occurred to him to worry that he might have any pureblood supremacists in his family, but it was nonetheless a relief to discover an outspoken great-grandfather who had wanted to help Muggles.
“Isn’t Henry a longer form of Harry?” Ginny asked.
“Yes, and he was known as Harry to the family, from what I gather,” said Professor Bloomwood. For some reason, this seemed more significant than anything else he’d learned so far; Harry glanced at his great-grandfather’s dates on the tree. Henry Potter hadn’t died until nineteen seventy - James would have been ten, making it quite possible that he had chosen to name his son after his granddad.
“Now, this is interesting,” Professor Bloomwood was saying when Harry tuned back in. She was pointing at a sibling of Henry’s. “Beatrice Potter - or Webb, after her marriage - she was a Squib, and a very influential social reformer in the Muggle world. Her research contributed to the founding of the welfare state, you know - ever so important.”
Harry could not help feeling slightly chuffed that his relatives, far from being Death Eaters or similar, had actually been extremely decent. He scanned the rest of the tree; familiar surnames kept jumping out at him in their marriage to Potters. Ambrose Shacklebolt. Hilaria Cresswell. Maurice Abbott. Virdis Macmillan had married Hawthorne Potter, a direct ancestor of Harry’s, in the seventeenth century; the tree went right back to the twelfth, as Professor Bloomwood explained, where the name was believed to have come from the nickname of Linfred of Stinchcombe, known as ‘the potterer’.
In the fifteenth century Harry found two more familiar names: Ermintrude Granger, who had married Edern Potter, and the wife of their son Cuadan, one Helewisa Tonks. Granger, he reminded himself, was a very common Muggle name, but -
“Tonks - yes, quite unusual,” Professor Bloomwood agreed. “I can’t say for certain, of course, but there could be a common ancestor between you and your godson.”
Away from the family tree - though Harry kept glancing back at it, as if it might suddenly disappear - Bloomwood showed him the various other treasures she had unearthed. There was a display dedicated to inventions - as well as Sleekeazy’s, it transpired that members of Harry’s family were responsible for the invention of the Sneakoscope (Ida Abbott, nee Potter) and Portkeys - Langward Potter, his great-great-great grandfather, had created the Portus spell. The people behind the facts were just as fascinating; Ginny was particularly intrigued by the wife of Langward’s son Wilfrid (inventor of the Draught of Peace) - a witch named Cecily Hopkins, who by all accounts had been something of a livewire.
“She was from a small village in the Peak District, called Lipton,” said Professor Bloomwood. “Not a pureblood family, or renowned by any means, but she somehow became involved with the Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish. Obviously they didn’t marry - he never did, and she met Wilfrid some years later. During a pub brawl, allegedly.”
“Who was doing the brawling?” Ginny wanted to know. “If it was Cecily, I like her even more.”
Bloomwood produced several old letters that Cecily Hopkins had written to her sister during her romance with the Duke. It was clear that she was not easily impressed.
“‘My dearest Nellie'," Ginny read aloud. “ I must confess I grow weary of this man, who talks of little but the sublime Caroline Ponsonby - his cousin - who has married another. I have seen Miss Ponsonby (he says she is to be known as ‘Lady’, but I have heard nothing to suggest that should be true) and quite frankly I do not know what has him so entranced. Certainly she is less attractive than I. I intend to allow him perhaps a month longer to come to his senses and see that he is quite blessed by my company.’ Ha! She sounds brilliant.”
“She also complained at length about the Duke’s involvement in ‘tiresome Muggle politics’, which she thought could have been resolved by letting the wives of the politicians take charge,” said Professor Bloomwood, sounding amused. “Needless to say, he didn’t come to his senses … and never found anyone else.”
“Serves him right,” Ginny remarked.
Discovering the history of his family had given Harry a strange feeling that he couldn’t quite place up until now: looking around at the evidence of his ancestors’ inventions and exploits, he realised what it was.
“I’m not special!” he blurted out.
“Sorry?” said Bloomwood, bemused.
“Are you having a moment, darling?” said Ginny.
Harry gestured wildly at the displays around him. “No, look - all these people, they did things, they weren’t just normal, were they? I’m not special! I’m just one of the Potters!”
As he said it, it fully hit him just how wonderful a feeling that was. Just one of the Potters. Not alone in the history books. Potter, Harry would sit next to Potter, Henry. His children could well go on to join their ancestors as inventors and activists and potioneers.
He doubted he could have expressed it fully in words, but he had a sudden, powerful sense of being connected, rooted to something that he could not explain.
“Can I have any of this stuff?” he asked Bloomwood. “A copy of it?”
“You can have all of it,” she told him. “It’s yours.”
“I thought the family tree would look nice in the study,” Ginny added, slipping her arm through Harry’s. He looked at her.
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Don’t be daft - and besides, if I wanted my family tree in the house it’d take up every wall we have. There isn’t one, anyway, loads of people have started it, but either got bored or copped it before they could finish.”
Harry could have happily spent all day surrounded by his family history, but it wasn’t fair to leave the children with other people for any great length of time - people they liked, anyway - and so he thanked Professor Bloomwood profusely, still marvelling at how much effort she must have put in.
“You know - History of Magic’s really popular at Hogwarts now, and we could always use another teacher,” he said, shaking her hand. “If you’re ever interested …”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Bloomwood smiled. Harry glanced at Ginny, collecting her bag by the door, and lowered his voice.
“There was something else, too …”
---
Harry’s heart was light as they emerged onto the street; he would have skipped had he not been certain that Ginny would have laughed herself silly. Part of him still could not believe what he had seen.
“That was the best gift you could have given me,” he told Ginny honestly, squeezing her hand tightly. “You’re - just - amazing. I don’t know how I’m going to top that for your birthday …”
“Well, you’d better,” said Ginny teasingly. “I expect something exceptional in return.”
“How about this?” Harry bent his head to whisper in her ear. Her eyes went very wide.
“Goodness me, Mr. Potter. I was more thinking along the lines of something you can wrap …”
Harry grinned, then remembered what he’d asked Professor Bloomwood before he left. He dug in his pocket for the scrap of parchment, which he handed to Ginny.
“Hopefully this is a start?”
“Chubby Mug?” she read. “What’s a chubby mug? If you’re going to insult me, I’d rather you said it to my face -”
“No, idiot - it’s the shop where she got that dress. Seriously, Gin,” Harry said, drawing her closer to him, despite the fact that they were standing in the middle of the street. “I don’t know how to thank you …”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. She smelled of the same flowery scent she had when he was sixteen and had fallen for her irreversibly, happily handing over his heart to her. Every day she amazed him; every day he fell a little bit more in love with her. If he could have gone down in history for being Ginny Weasley’s husband, he thought, that would be just fine by him.